Painful parting: Selling childhood home can be emotional, financial challenge

By Danielle Braff

Chicago Tribune|

Jun 14, 2017 | 2:00 AM

Left to right: brothers Cary, Bruce and Mike Claver are seen outside their childhood home in Skokie, June 11, 2017. The Claver siblings — there are five in all — took on the emotionally weighty task of clearing out and selling their childhood home when their father died in 2011 and mother moved into an assisted living facility in 2012. (Jim Young/Chicago Tribune)

Bruce Claver's parents lived in their Skokie home for more than a half century — until his father died in August 2011 and his mother moved into a senior facility in January 2012.

Then, the five Claver siblings — four brothers and one sister — had to clear out a home filled with memories.

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It took five months and plenty of tears.

"Throughout all our lives, no matter what happened to us, we always had a home base, a safe, secure and loving home base," said Bruce Claver, 52, the youngest sibling, who lives a few miles away from his childhood home and works in hospitality management. "I felt like I was casting away my security blanket, the one material item where I always felt protected and safe."

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The sale of a childhood home can trigger plenty of emotions that aren't manifested during the sale of a regular house. These may make the real estate process trickier emotionally and financially, as families tend to see childhood homes through nostalgic lenses.

A scratch on the laminate floor may trigger the memory of the time you played hockey in the kitchen; those pencil marks in the laundry room may represent how much you grew from year to year, said Dr. Ramani Durvasula, professor of psychology at California State University at Los Angeles and author of two books.

"Childhood homes, even those we lived in for a short time, become repositories for our memories, and even years later, when we see a home we once lived in, hundreds of evocative memories can flood in," Durvasula said. "We remember where the Christmas tree stood, or the mantel by which all the prom and graduation and first day of school pictures sit."

Chances are you move on from that childhood home when you get older, and continue to move for jobs, to upgrade to a bigger house or downsize — but typically it's voluntary.

When selling a family home, however, the move is often more traumatic and emotional because the sale tends to be a result of a death or due to extenuating circumstances, said Dr. Arthur Kovacs, California-based psychologist and founding dean of the California School of Professional Psychology, part of Alliant International University.

"You're dismantling something that was once precious, and you have to go through grief and mourning when this happens," Kovacs said.

Even though most adults haven't lived in their family homes for years or even for decades, those powerful emotions that return upon entering the house make it very difficult for them to sell it — and real estate agents are very familiar with this scenario.

"Everyone says, 'I'm not emotionally attached,' but I've done this for 20 years, and I know it's not the case with these family homes," said Cathy Casalicchio, associate broker with Daniel Gale Sotheby's International Realty in Huntington, N.Y. "There's a huge amount of separation anxiety going on."

There always tends to be much more grief than people are expecting because they're bidding their memories goodbye, and there's usually a moment — which could last at least as long as a month — when they're reflecting on what once was, and understanding that it's over, Kovacs said.

Claver was surprised by how swiftly his parent's home went under contract — in just a week or two.

"I was quickly flooded with emotion as the realization set in that the only home and safe haven I had known for my entire life — 47 years — was about to be sold, and I could never again set foot inside," he said.

Sometimes, sellers can hit a snag when they believe that sentimental value translates to monetary value and then unduly increase the sales price, said Lauren Friedman, real estate agent with the Team Pennywise Real Estate Group at Keller Williams in Long Beach, Calif.

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If family members can't agree on the price, they may want to consider having a pre-listing appraisal done by a licensed appraiser before listing the home in the multiple listing service, Friedman suggested.

That's just one of many potential real estate issues when it comes to selling a family home, she said.

For instance, siblings may have completely different ideas of what should be done with the home. Some are able to move on and prep it for a sale, to declutter and depersonalize. But sometimes, there are siblings who may not want to sell, and don't have the funds to buy out their brothers or sisters.

Often, a family will want to sell at the maximum dollar, yet members aren't willing to modify in the most cost-effective way because their personal view of why the property is valuable remains a challenge, Friedman said.

"They want the home to stay as it was 20 or 30 years ago," Friedman said. "They feel that there is value in the older kitchen or bath, and may set it at a higher price than the market is willing to bear because of emotional attachments."

Friedman said that in these scenarios, it's important for loved ones to listen closely to each other. In many cases, siblings will share family stories or talk about what the house means to them. Sometimes, conversation offers closure.

Photographing the rooms, furniture, wallpaper and even appliances — anything that evokes a memory — also helps with closure, said Dr. Linda Sapadin, Long Island-based psychologist and author of "Master Your Fears," along with other self-help books.

The family could also take door knobs and lighting fixtures from the childhood home as transitional objects, Durvasula suggested.